Clara reads Proust It is a book that makes you smile, that makes you want to dive into Proust’s writing, inevitably, but also in all those great works where it’s good to escape and which have the power to change lives. We caught up with Stéphane Carlier in France to discuss his latest novel.
Clara’s life isn’t hectic until a customer walks into the hair salon where she works and leaves a book there. Were it not for the aura of this mysterious and wonderful artist that surrounded the man, perhaps she would never have put this novel aside. In search of lost time.
On a dreary Sunday in March, a young hairstylist lets herself into the world of Marcel Proust…and it won’t turn out the same way.
“We needed a great book, a great author. A colossal book… a masterpiece of world literature,” considers Stéphane Carlier, who immersed himself in the seven volumes of Search to write this novel. “Maybe that’s why I made this book,” he adds. Deep down, perhaps, I wanted to rediscover Proust’s world, which seemed to me very different from what I had read when I was 21. »
He admits that it is difficult to read Search And you understand everything at this age. It takes a certain maturity, in a way, to recognize what he calls the genius and magic of Proust. “The shock wave that always occurs when closing a book… Indeed, we no longer see reality as we saw it before reading it.”
In his opinion, Clara is one of those people who follow an already predetermined path when they are predetermined for something else. The further she reads it, the more she realizes that “the little world of Cindy Coiffure,” just like the companion for whom she no longer feels any desire, is no longer enough for her.
It is the story of people who are not in their lives. This book reveals her to herself, ”says the French writer.
Life throws us somewhere, we think it’s a permanent place because we’re here, we don’t want to make the effort, we don’t have the curiosity, it’s more comfortable to stay in the place than fate determined for us than to look elsewhere … and I’m sure there are many people who They will be happier in a slightly different life.
Stephen Carlier
Books “better than life”?
As Clara reads and immerses herself in Proust’s world, Clara ends up believing that “books can be better than life,” as Stéphane Carlier writes. “A sentence à la Truffaut,” notes the man who calls himself a huge fan of the French director.
From this point on, the click occurs. Fortunately, the young hairdresser will meet another enthusiastic reader of Proust who doesn’t fit “any box” and who says her writing saved her because she no longer feels lonely after reading them.
Stéphane Carlier also points out that in his next novel, The Polar Comedy, Life is not a novel by Susan Cooper (due for release this coming fall), he writes that his definition of hell is “a world without literature where books would never have been invented.” “You can’t find in TikTok or in video games what you can find in books.”
He himself recently indulged in delight in reading the books of Christian Poppin, who died at the end of November – “it feels really good.”
He adds that books that do good are his “hobby” as a writer. “I would like to write more serious books, but I am very happy to write comics.”
Clara reads Proust
Stephen Carlier
Gallimard
192 pages
“Amateur entrepreneur. Professional internet expert. Zombie maven. Incurable pop culture scholar.”
